THE GARDEN

Southland Times, Issue 22378, 18 July 1934, Page 12

THE GARDEN

WORK FOR THE WEEK (By J. A. McPherson.) Forcing Shrubs. Readers with a warm greenhouse or very sunny porch can quite easily force a few of the hardy spring flowering shrubs. Go out into the garden or even to the nursery and choose sturdy plants with well ripened wood and ones that you know by experience will give plenty of bloom. Lift them carefully and pot up into tins, tubs or boxes the size of each container varying with the sizes of the roots on each plant. Pot them into ordinary soil and stand in the warmest position it is possible to give them. Do not overwater; but to encourage the buds to break away, syringe the plants over all their stems with tepid water at least once a day. This will soften the bark and leaf scales and very soon the flower buds will appear. Many and varied are the subjects to choose from and from the following list one can pick and choose at will; Flowering Cherries, flowering Currants, Azaleas, Rhododendrons, Forsythia, Wistaria, Laburnum, flowering Apples, flowering Plums, flowering Apricots, Deutzias, Kerria japonica, Pyrus japonica, Magnolia stcllata, Magnolia conspicua, and many others of equal flowering qualities. As soon as the plants have finished their blooming, stand them outside for the summer or even tip them carefully out of their containers and replant in a sunny part of the garden. Here they will make excellent growth before being again required for next flowering season. The Greenhouse.

Balsams make very fine greenhouse plants and the seed should be sown in gentle heat this month. The main point to bear in mind is that.these plants do not like a check of any sort. As soon as the seedlings are fit to handle pot them singly into small pots using fairly rich soil. Watch carefully that they do not become pot bound and as soon as the roots show round the sides of the pots repot immediately into five inch pots, using a rich open potting mixture. The double varieties are by far the best and while they are growing give them plenty of light. Repot Calceolarias and guard them against greenfly by spraying or dipping the young plants into a spray mixture before they are potted on. Sweet Peas may be sown under glass, and when once the seedlings are up give them plenty of light. It may be that the boxes will have to be placed on shelves near the glass in order that sufficient light can be given. When the plants are three inches high stake them with twigs of manuka and then gradually. harden them off by standing outside in a sheltered corner. When once outside watch for attacks of slugs. Seedsowing Soil.

Now is the time to prepare a quantity of soil for general seedsowing. It should be sweet and not over-rich. The best is obtained from chopping down an old turf heap and allowing it to pass through a half inch sieve, the coarser material being placed to one side for use as drainage in the bottom of the boxes. If turf is not available then use well mellowed and sweet garden soil. To the above bases may be added sand to keep the soil open and a little vary well rotted cow manure; but never add too much manure to seedsowing soil. Better to wait till the pricking off stage is reached and add more then when the seedlings really require something to build them up. Get everything ready and mixed this month and store in a dry place, for remember that seedsowing can be done on a wet day when work outside is at a standstill. Sterilizing the Soil. All soil intended for seedsowing should be partially sterlized. This can be done by steaming, baking, or watering with various compounds. Steam sterlization which is done wider high pressure is not out of the question for the amateur grower; but he can quite easily bake the soil. This is done by lighting a fire under a sheet of tin placing a few shovelfuls of soil on top and keeping it continually turned over. The soil must not be too dry otherwise it will burn and much plant food is lost. By this baking method a barrowful of soil can be treated on a sheet of iron and should take about twenty minutes to carry out. Do not use the soil immediately but store it for a day or two. Any manures used should also be sterilized in the same manner and plant boxes treated with boiling water or the two compounds given below. Another method is to water the heap of soil with a 2 per cent, solution of formaldehyde, turning the soil while it is being poured on and then covering the heap with sacks to keep in the fumes.

The last method is to water the soil with chestnut compound which is made up as follows: Two parts by weight of copper sulphate, and eleven parts by weight of ammonium carbonate both finely powdered and mixed together and used at the rate of one ounce to a gallon of water. Formaldahyde and chestnut compound will kill all fungus diseases but not the seeds of weeds in the soil. Baking will kill all fungus diseases and seeds of weeds as well.

Chestnut compound should not be stored in metal containers but in closely stoppered glass jars. It is splendid to use when watering germinating seedlings and will not hurt the plants. To arrest “damping off” in seedlings it is excellent; Plant boxes can be treated these two compounds before the season starts. Fruit and Vegetables. Clear away and thoroughly burn all prunings from fruit trees, and give the trees a thorough spraying. An oil spray for insect pests and lime-sulphur spray for both insect and fungus diseases. Hurry on the work of planting new fruit trees and see that they are well firmed into the soil. Never plant deeper than the trees have been used to in the nursery for the plants will become sickly and fail to throw out vigorous growths. All wall fruits should be gone over and the branches nailed and tied into position. Do not make the tying too tight round the limbs but allow for swelling as the sap rises during the growing season. Scions intended for grafting should be cut and healed into the ground. It is too early yet to carry out the actual work of grafting but the scions must be cut to retard them a little till the sap in the stock plants is starting to rise. It is yet a little early for sowing even the earliest of vegetables; but ground work such as breaking down the top soil and getting it into a good tilth can be undertaken. Rhubarb and Seakale can still be forced. BEST DOZEN DAFFODILS Recently at the R.H.S. Old Efall, in Vincent Square, Westminster, a discussion took place as to the “Best Dozen Daffodils.” The discussion was opened by the well-known daffodil raiser, Mr P. D. Williams. Mr Williams said that in selecting what he considered to be the best dozen daffodils he had chosen only varieties which were vigorous and had increased to such an extent that it was obvious that they had good

stitutions. He had also endeavoured to make his list representative of the different types of daffodils and to select varieties which were suitable not only for exhibition, but also for garden decoration and cutting. His selection was Beersheba, Beryl, Dawson City, Firetail, Fortune, _ Glorious, Havelock, King Alfred, Mitylene, Sarchedon, Trevithian, and Tunis. Mr W. B. Cranfield, who followed, gave as his selection Beersheba, Croesus, Firetail, Fortune, Grenadier, King Alfred, Medusa, Mitylene, Pilgrimage, Suda, Venetia, and White Emperor. NATURE DEFIED STOVES TO WARM APPLE TREES To heat an orchard with oil stoves sounds as hopeful a proposition as trying to raise the temperature of the Atlantic with hot-water pipes. Yet an amateur fruit grower at Bedford (Mr A. G. Harrington) has shown that not only can it be done, but that there is every appearance of its being economically sound (states the Belfast Daily Telegraph’s agricultural correspondent). Mr Harrington is a retired analytical chemist who came home from Singapore a few years ago and took up fruit growing as a hobby on five acres of land at Bedford. In 1931 a May frost changed the value of his apple crop from about £l,OOO to £25 in a single night. “I decided that this sort of thing was intolerable,” Mr Harrington told me, “and that I simply would not put up with it. I began experimenting, and during my observations I found that the frosts that do the damage come between mid-April and the end of May, and nearly always on a calm, starry night, with little or no wind. I also found that the blanket of frosted air extends only about 25ft upwards, and above that the air is warm. “I had heard that the Californian fruit growers had been using oil stoves since 1928 to ward off late frosts, but these cost over 20/- each, and 40 are required to the acre. “With a little research of my own I have been able to devise an oil stove that needs no attention once it is lit, costs only 3/6 and in my limited experience has proved completely effective in saving the blossom from the effects of a late frost, provided it is not a windy night. Ido not claim that the system is of any value for a wind frost, but, so far as I can make out, April and May frosts come practically on a windless night. “The heater is the simplest affair in the world. It is just a round tin box like the hat boxes they used to call bandboxes —with a lid and two air holes. Two gallons of fuel oil are placed in each, and they have home-made wicks of old sacking on a piece of wire. Forty are used to every acre, and they are placed in position in the middle of April.” ?_n ordinary maximum and minimum thermometer is fitted with an electrical device, which completes an electric circuit when the thermometer sinks to a pre-determined figure. When it touches this: figure it sounds an alarm bel) in Mr Harrington’s bedroom, and he then knows that the temperature has fallen to danger point and he must get to and light his stoves. He does this with a blow lamp, and can easily get rounu an acre in 15 minutes. He had to light his stoves once last year and three times the year before. The cost of the fuel each time the stoves are lit works out at 30/- per acre. With the capital cost of the stoves at only £7 per acre it seems well worth while if, perhaps, some hundreds of pounds are to be saved. “It seems absurd,” Mr Harrington said, “that the labour and hope of a whole year should be brought to nothing by a few hours’ frost on one night.” Needless to say, Mr Harrington was at first regarded as a lunatic, but this year—the first that heaters have been available to fellow fruit farmers—--10,000 have already been distributed, and altogether 20,000 are likely to be in use. SALT v. LIME Now that every gardener has a quantity of vegetable refuse (weeds, autumn leaves, etc.), which he desires to convert into a more or less soluble compost, the value of salt as an aid to decomposition might be more widely appreciated. Lime has undoubtedly virtues in the preparation of a vegetable compost, but it has its drawbacks. One of these is its effect in destroying humus, and it is an open question whether its presence is advantageous to certain crops, of which potatoes may be mentioned as one. Salt is much better and safer. It reduces vegetable matter to a soluble condition in a very short space of time, and that without impoverishing one of the most valuable elements of the compost—its humus. It is disliked by wireworm and other pests. Most vegetables appear to thrive where it is used, and it has the effect of rendering light, hot soils more retentive of moisture. Apply the salt to each layer of leaves or vegetable refuse as it is stacked. Each layer should be about a foot thick, and an ounce of salt to each square foot of surface should be applied to each layer. If the leaves or refuse is dug directly into a trench, sprinkle with the salt, using about an ounce to a space of two or three square feet. —Auckland Star.